It is quite hard to imagine a meaner civic action than the decision to put parking tickets on the cars parked one evening in Castle Square; it was, apparently, the first move by Shropshire Council to harass motorists parked ‘illegally’ in Ludlow during the evening.

It is particularly galling that our visitors should be fined to fill SCC’s coffers; none of the parking fees come back to Ludlow.

The matter was discussed the Town Council recent meeting and it emerges that Shropshire Council’s action may not be legal; there are no notices alerting motorists to the square being a no parking area and the required yellow lines are not legally painted nor are they clearly visible.

So what is this all about?

It could be yet another straight forward move by SCC to extract even more money out of Ludlow whilst slashing our local services.

There are, however, other less palatable explanations; political bias being one.

I suggest this is a feature of both national and local politics; at a national level there is the undisguised favouring of local authorities who share the hue of the government and at a local level, as an overt example, when working in the Ludlow child care team I was told by a Shropshire councillor from the majority party ‘ when you return a Labour councillor from Ludlow then perhaps we can start thinking about improving your child care provisions’.

Suffice to say our three Ludlow councillors are not part of the majority party.

It was a sad day when local politics became just a mirror image of national party politics; SCC’s decision making is predicated almost entirely on the national party line.

It is a disheartening experience to see the ‘nodding through’ of decisions reached behind closed doors; Shropshire Council operates on the Strong Leader model – a small cabal makes the decisions and the ‘herd’ is required only to say yes.

It is at the level of Town Council we can still see meaningful local democracy based on town councillors knowledge of our local area, direct representation from members of the public, open discussion between councillors , and a vote and decision that mirrors that process.

In a spirit of anarchy and with the memory of Brexit still fresh, I suggest it is time to scrap Shropshire Council and bring our decision making back home.